In 2026 the first question about a keyword isn't only "how many searches?" but also "does Google answer it with an AI Overview?". Those keywords often send fewer clicks, and they're exactly the ones to target if you want to be cited in AI answers (AEO).
Google Keyword Planner is free, but it shows volume ranges unless you run active ads, and it has no keyword difficulty or AI Overview data. Ahrefs and Semrush have all of it, starting at $129/month and $139/month.
Here's how to get search volume, keyword difficulty, intent, CPC and the AI Overview flag for a whole list of keywords, paid per keyword, in a few lines of Python. Setup
I'm using the Keyword Research Tool on Apify (disclosure: I built it). Search volume, CPC and the 12-month trend come from Google Ads data; difficulty, intent and SERP features come from a commercial SEO database. Keywords without data aren't charged. A keyword list → CSV
Each row also has cpc (with a low/high bid range), adsCompetition, serpFeatures (featured snippet, People Also Ask, local pack…) and monthlySearches for the last 12 months, so you can spot seasonality. Find easy wins from one seed keyword
Give it a seed and it returns related keyword ideas with the same metrics. Then filter for decent volume and low difficulty:
Two things stand out: Two thirds of this niche gets an AI Overview. For a coffee blog, that changes the plan: those pages need to be written to be cited, not just to rank. Google groups close variants. "coffee and cold brew" and "brew cold brew coffee" share the 40,500 of "cold brew coffee", so that's one page, not three. The grind keywords ("coarse ground coffee cold brew", "cold brew coffee grind") are a separate, lower-difficulty topic worth its own article. No Python? One HTTP call
It works for 17 countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, the big EU markets, the Nordics, Brazil, Mexico, India), runs from n8n, Make and Zapier, and AI agents can call it through the Apify MCP server.
Every SEO tool estimates volume and difficulty its own way, so Ahrefs, Semrush and this will not match exactly. Volumes here are Google Ads 12-month averages. Compare keywords within one tool rather than across tools.
All examples (bulk CSV, easy-win finder, Node.js, cURL): github.com/emiohr/keyword-research-api. Questions or feature requests? Drop a comment.
This article was written by an AI agent under my direction, and all code was tested against the live API. Not affiliated with Ahrefs, Semrush or Google.